Callista sat directly in front of me during our CafeMom Coffee Break with Newt Gingrich a few weeks ago, and I kept sneaking peeks at her hair throughout the event. Under the lights, it practically glowed. She looked like some sort of fussy, retro angel.
I'm just dying to touch that hair!
~ Lindsay Ferrier on The Stir

I Almost Got Callista Gingrich's Hair
. . . The color alone took three hours to achieve. Three hours of bleach and gloss and glaze and goop and my head being knocked about left and right. The gloss (or maybe it was the glaze?) burned my scalp; when I mentioned this, Pejman looked right at me and said, “Beauty tingles.”Holly Allen on Salon

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack. He’d built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.
As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ”Dad!” he yelled. ”Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.
As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.
~ Time Swampland, quoting the original Boston Globe story

Among those who professed shock at the story was Fox News host Chris Wallace. "I have a yellow lab named Winston. I would no sooner put him in a kennel on the roof of my car than I would one of my children. Question: What were you thinking?" Wallace asked the former governor.
Replied Romney with a nervous laugh, "This is a completely airtight kennel, mounted on the top of our car. He climbed up there regularly, enjoyed himself, he was in a kennel at home a great deal of the time as well. We loved the dog, it was where he was comfortable and we had five kids inside the car and my guess is he liked it a lot better in his kennel than he would have liked it inside."
~ Reported by NPR

HOST on CNN: Is there a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election?Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney Advisor: Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.
~ Think Progress

What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex -- what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
. . . So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.
~ Rush Limbaugh talking about Sandra Fluke

I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.
~ Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock, R-Indiana (lost)

The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers. Again, the Romney campaign insists he saves no tax by using them, but there is no way to check this.
~ Vanity Fair

Today we’re learning more about Mitt Romney’s bets against America. Vanity Fair’s raising important questions about Romney’s offshore accounts in foreign tax havens, including his mysterious corporation in Bermuda, his funds in the Cayman Islands, and the Swiss bank account he opened. The question is, why? Was he avoiding paying his fair share of U.S. taxes? Was he hedging against the dollar? Until he releases his tax returns from that period, Americans will never know. This raises serious questions. If he has nothing to hide, why doesn’t he just release his tax returns?
~ Obama Spokesman Ben LaBolt

BREAKING: Tagg Romney says I wanted to be First Horse less than any horse he's ever met. #NoFHOTUS
— Rafalca Romney (@RafalcaRomney) December 24, 2012

As a living, breathing, clippety-cloppeting, velvet-nosed and liquid-eyed avatar of Romney’s extreme wealth, she’s given her uncle Mitt the kind of handicap his advisers fear might make his path to the White House heavy going. That may be why the Republican presidential hopeful betrays scant interest in his wife’s four-legged protégé.
During Romney’s accident-prone sojourn in London in late July, he told NBC‘s Brian Williams that he didn’t even know when Rafalca would be appearing at the Games — “I have to tell you,” he said, “this is Ann’s sport.”
~ Time Magazine

Obama is going to need all the help he can get because Romney is surging, thanks in part to his new secret weapon. Long time viewers know that every year I declare a sport of the summer. Last year it was the elegant art of canoe dancing....Last week I declared that this year's sport of the summer will be Dressage, or "Horse Ballet."
. . . The Romneys are the proud owners of a German Oldenburg mare named Rafalca. There is no better way to dispel the myth that Romney is a detached patrician elite than competitive horse prancing. I mean, it's basically Nascar in a velvet top hat.
~ Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central

~~~~~~~~~~~~

8. The Romney Shambles

Americans: This Mitt person is some sort of American Borat, right? #romneyshambles

Romney could not have played more into the image of the callow American if he’d showed up at Buckingham Palace in Dockers. In his honor, the nation even resurrected a little-used epithet, “wazzock,” which refers to, as John Cassidy wrote, “a hapless idiot who blunders around saying or doing things he or she shouldn’t” (or, literally, a bull’s penis). This weekend, the BBC reported that, according to Harvey Weinstein, David Cameron, the Tory Prime Minister, has told people that Romney’s graceless performance has won him “the unique distinction of uniting all of England against him with his various remarks.”
~ Lauren Collins on The New Yorker

Who is this klutz, this clodhopper, this lawn sprinkler of national insult? Well, he`s Mitt Romney. Remember him, the guy who promised to restore and upgrade the special relationship with Great Britain and has instead barfed on the Buckingham Palace lawn?
~ Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball

. . . The other thing they have to understand is that Mitt is honest, his integrity is just golden. We pay our taxes, we are absolutely . . . beyond paying our taxes we also give 10% of our income to charity, so we have no issues that way.
The only reason we don't disclose anymore is, you know, we just become a bigger target.
~ NBC Interview with Natalie Morales

This is hard and, you know, it's an important thing that we're doing right now and it's an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt's qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.
~ Ann on Radio Iowa

My investigators believe that the long-form birth certificate was manufactured electronically and that it did not originate in a paper format as claimed by the White House.
~ Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona via LA Times

He said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia… Now they’re saying it was a mistake. Just like his Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya, and she pointed down the road to the hospital, and after people started screaming at her she said, ‘Oh, I mean Hawaii.’ Give me a break.”
~ Donald Trump on Daily Beast

Speaking about his Michigan roots, he said, "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised." The joke was received with hearty applause by the audience. . . .
~ Mitt Romney Speaking in Michigan, via Huff Post

HH: Are you still running?
PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.
~ Paul Ryan Radio Interview with Hugh Hewitt as he lies about his Marathon Time

Runner's World checked 11 years of results for Grandma's Marathon, from 1988 through 1998, and found a finisher in the 1990 race by the name of Paul D. Ryan, 20, of Minneapolis.
Ryan's middle name is Davis, and he was 20 in 1990. The finishing time listed was 4 hours, 1 minute and 25 seconds.
~ Research by Runner's World Magazine proving that Ryan was Lying

On Paul Ryan's Republican National Convention Speech:"Three Words: Dazzling, Deceiving, Distracting"
. . . to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.
~ Sally Kohn on Fox News

~~~~~~~~~~~~

12. Clint Eastwood Talks to an Empty Chair

If Clint Eastwood insisted on talking to an inanimate object he could've just chatted with Mitt Romney. #RNC2012
— daddyfiles (@DaddyFiles) August 31, 2012

I don't . . . I don't . . . I don't know . . . Clint Eastwood is 82 years old. And I don't know if that's what was going on there . . . That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention in my entire life, and it will be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen if I live to be one hundred.”
~ Rachel Maddow on MSNBC

I could never wrap my head around why the world and the President that Republicans describe bears so little resemblance to the world and the President that I experience. And now I know why.
There is a President Obama that only Republicans can see.
~ Jon Stewart on The Daily Show

All of us make mistakes. . . . What people want to know, though, is you're not writing off a big chunk of the country because the way our democracy works.
This is a big country. And people disagree a lot, but one thing I’ve never tried to do – and I think none of us can do in public office – is suggest that because someone doesn’t agree with me that they’re victims or they’re unpatriotic.
~ President Obama on CBS, The David Letterman Show

Today Mitt Romney Lost the Election
You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser, released today by David Corn at Mother Jones, has killed Mitt Romney's campaign for president.
~ Josh Barro on Bloomberg

What things would I cut from spending? Well, first of all, I will eliminate all programs by this test, if they don't pass it: Is the program so critical it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I'll get rid of it. Obamacare's on my list. ... I'm sorry, Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one.
~ Mitt Romney to PBS Moderator Jim Leher during First Presidential Debate

And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?"
And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.
~ Mitt Romney During Presidential Debate, via ABC News

The President talked about women as breadwinners for Americans families; Mitt Romney talked about them as resumes in a binder. #TeamBarack

Mr. Biden, clearly delighted to come to President Obama’s rescue, relished his role, addressing his opponent as “my friend” but dismissing his arguments as “malarkey.” He laughed at Mr. Ryan’s remarks so often and so heartily that at times he seemed like a guest at a comedy club roast, not a vice president debating the fate of the nation with his opponent.
~ New York Times

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
~ Barack Obama During 3rd Debate

If President Obama wins re-election on Tuesday, the historical memory of the race might turn on the role played by Hurricane Sandy.
Already, some analysts are describing the storm as an “October surprise” that allowed Mr. Obama to regain his footing after stumbling badly in the first presidential debate and struggling to get back on course. Some Republicans seem prepared to blame a potential defeat for Mitt Romney on the storm, and the embrace of Mr. Obama by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other public officials.
~ Nate Silver on the importance of Hurricane Sandy

The election isn't gonna be moved. It's gonna happen Tuesday. Of course, the opposite theory is, “What the hell is Christie doing? He's giving Obama a chance to look presidential, clean up a state, look competent, look like he cares and so forth. What's a Republican doing propping up Obama?"
~ Rush Limbaugh

Other states getting federal storm relief without kissing Obama's rear.Does Christie not know RINO's are an endangered species?

Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the “Mr. New Castrati” voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program. In fact, Silver could easily be the poster child for the New Castrati in both image and sound. Nate Silver, like most liberal and leftist celebrities and favorites, might be of average intelligence but is surely not the genius he's made out to be. His political analyses are average at best and his projections, at least this year, are extremely biased in favor of the Democrats.
~ Dean Chambers, founder of Unskewed Polls, on Examiner ~ this paragraph has now been edited out of the article

Nate Silver: Patron Saint of Confirmation Bias
. . . When the left wakes up on Wednesday, surveying the electoral wreckage around them, they may regret allowing themselves to be lulled into such a false sense of security.
~ Michael Flynn on Breitbart

This is a bad day for Republican pollsters, and it’s something that they should be held accountable for. You have to tell your clients the truth, and you have to be accurate. And to miss so many states and to be this far off, your Fox News viewers ought to be outraged, because day in and day out they were told that Mitt Romney was going to win, and the fact is Ohio was ​never​ up, Wisconsin was ​never​ up, Pennsylvania was ​never​ up…the published polls were correct. Nate Silver was correct. But the Republican establishment polls were wrong.
~ Republican Pollster Frank Luntz

That happened (the re-election of Barack Obama). That really happened.
We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade.
There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.
We're not going to repeal health reform.

Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance.
We are not going to do that.
We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.

We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on.
We are not going to redefine rape.
We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married.

We are not going to double Guantanamo.
We are not eliminating the department of energy or the department of education or housing at the federal level.
We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want.
We are not scaling back on student loans, because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from their parents.

We are not vetoing the Dream Act.
We are not self-deporting.

We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt.
We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.

We are not going to have, as a President, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help, and there was no apology not ever.

We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton.
We are not bringing Dick Cheney back.
We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War.
We are not going to do it.
We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that as a country, and we said no last night, loudly.

Ohio really did go to President Obama last night.
And he really did win.
And he really was born in Hawaii.
And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again.

And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month.
And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.
And the polls were not screwed to oversample Democrats.
And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math.

And climate change is real.
And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.
And evolution is a thing.

And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us.
And nobody is taking away anyone's guns.
And taxes have not gone up.
And the deficit is dropping, actually.

And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
And the moon landing was real.
And FEMA is not building concentration camps.
And U.N. election observers are not taking over Texas.

And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism.

. . . And the if the Republican party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems.

Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in realtime, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center.

The clot was located in the vein between the brain and and the skull behind Clinton's right ear and did not result in any stroke or neurological damage, her doctors said in a statement.
Clinton was treated with blood thinners to help dissolve the clot and would be released once the medication dose had been established, they said.
"In all other aspects of her recovery, the secretary is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff," Clinton's doctors said.
Clinton, 65, was suffering from a stomach virus earlier this month when she fainted because of dehydration, causing the concussion.

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines released a statement late Sunday that said the secretary was being treated at New York Presbyterian Hospital and was expected to be kept under observation for two days. Earlier this month, Clinton’s aides said she fainted and hit her head, causing a concussion. She has remained out of the public eye ever since.
Read the full statement:

In the course of a follow-up exam today, Secretary Clinton's doctors discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago. She is being treated with anti-coagulants and is at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours.
Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion. They will determine if any further action is required.

Many on Twitter were recalling today that back when Hillary fell and suffered a concussion, members of the right-wing media made lots of jokes about a fake malady that would keep the Secretary of State from testifying about Benghazi. I knew that was total BS - why would Hillary suddenly be afraid to tell the truth to Congress? It was just hateful talk from the hateful side of the country.

Here's the President on Meet the Press today schooling David Gregory on why the press needs to give up the false equivalency meme. And I really loved that Obama used the phrase "country first" to describe his plans, since that was the McCain/Palin slogan in 2008. Ha.

The only thing I would caution against, David, is I think this notion of, "Well, both sides are just kind of unwilling to cooperate." And that's just not true. I mean if you look at the facts, what you have is a situation here where the Democratic Party, warts and all, and certainly me, warts and all, have consistently done our best to try to put country first.

And to try to work with everybody involved to make sure that we've got an economy [that] grows. Make sure that it works for everybody. Make sure that we're keeping the country safe. And does the Democratic Party still have some knee-jerk ideological positions and are there some folks in the Democratic Party who sometimes aren't reasonable? Of course. That's true of every political party.

But generally if you look at how I've tried to govern over the last four years and how I'll continue to try to govern, I'm not driven by some ideological agenda. I am a pretty practical guy. And I just want to make sure that things work. And one of the nice things about never having another election again, I will never campaign again, is I think you can rest assured that all I care about is making sure that I leave behind an America that is stronger, more prosperous, more stable, more secure than it was when I came into office.

Friday, December 28, 2012

One of the first posts I wrote on this blog back in March 2012 was about the National Geographic TV show "Doomsday Preppers." I had watched a couple of episodes and was amazed at the level of fear and paranoia in these hoarders of spam, rice and guns.

. . . these people longing for Armageddon don't laugh very much.They are deadly serious about everything and just want to show off their mad survival skills in the end-of-the-world Olympics. They've given up on life, music, and fun in favor of fear mongering.
. . . I couldn't help but feel a little disturbed that one family has enough food for the next 20 years while other people are eating out of dumpsters. But this philosophy isn't about helping the "other people" - the belief is that the weak ones are going to be destroyed by the next disaster while the self-sufficient strong survive. Doomsday Prepping begins at home and ends at home. Like their brethren in the Republican Party who don't believe in "sharing the wealth" or "that dang socialism," Doomsday Preppers live in the Narcissistic States of America.

At the time I was thinking about Paul Ryan's budget and the whole Ayn Rand philosophy as something that drives these clannish survivalists. But now that both the election and the Doomsdays - Dec. 12 or Dec. 21 - have come and gone with nothing unusual happening, these folks now seem like regular old Tea Party members to me.

Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, they fit right in with Todd Akin and the other anti-science people, the unskewed polls people who reject the math in front of their eyes and believe what they want to believe. Their love of ammunition hoarding is second only to that of Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, and if they aren't vapor-locked in their underground bunkers right now, they are cheering on the Congressman who refuse to do anything while a great country takes a dive over a man-made fiscal cliff.

Many now say it's a "New Age" instead of the end of the world. Where will the Doomsday Preppers fit into that scenario? They don't consider "peace and quiet" a plausible future, so I imagine that they really are doomed to be marginalized just like the anarchy-based Tea Party and the Gun-Loving GOP. The New Age will sail on without them, and good riddance.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

New words enter the English language every year, most of which start out as abbreviations or some type of slang. I geek out over such lists and can't get enough - my English Major upbringing, sorry. Here are just a few that were added to the dictionary in 2012 by From Merriam-Webster:

Man Cave
Earworm
Bucket List
Aha Moment
F-Bomb

Obviously some of those have been around for years, which makes me wonder where the dictionary people hang out or what they watch on TV. "Bucket List" is definitely new - a list of things you want to do before you "kick the bucket" - but wasn't "Aha Moment" around during the Gilligan's Island and Bullwinkle days? I recall Tim the Tool Man Taylor on the show Home Improvement designed a "Man Cave" back in the 1990s, which is where I first heard it. The euphemism "F-Bomb" has been around as long as I've been online - about 10 years now. I'm sure I saw it first on Livejournal during some type of Harry Potter fandom war - "Listen, Troll, don't you come around here dropping your F-Bombs on me just because you're hatin' on poor Professor Snape."

But F-Bomb is obviously the description of what Ralphie does when he accidentally says "Oh Fudge" while changing a tire in "A Christmas Story."

Since the "F" word has been around in the English language since the days of Yore, it's pretty cool that we can still come up with polite ways to say it that won't get us banned from Twitter or even Blogger.

"Earworm" - beyond originally being something to do with the corn crop - must harken back to that episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery from the 1970s in which a man gets a parasite called an "earwig" in his ear and realizes it is going to eat his brain; that idea was copied with great effect in the movie Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, when Ricardo Montalban as the evil Khan drops a couple of hideous alien creatures into the ear of poor Commander Chekov. Now when people say "earworm" they mean a song you can't get out of your head, like "Gangnam Style" or the Theme from Friends.

But still, those are useful, descriptive words, and fun times for the English Language.

Not so hot are the slang words we all use which probably won't make it into Webster's or the Oxford English Dictionary.

Over the past year, the phrase "I'm just Sayin'" has become a big joke at my house. During any election year I tend to get a little, shall we say, fired up about politics, but this year I became a total fanatic due to the high stakes for our country. Many times I've watched a family member's eyes glaze over as I told them the news of the day in detail, every gaffe from the Romney camp, every witty saying from whatever pundit, to the point they might raise a hand and say "Enough" or "Okay, Okay," which sometimes didn't phase me.

I became a little famous for adding one more thing, which the caveat addendum "I'm just sayin'" which after months of this, was met with groans from my poor victim conversational partner.

My husband has now became adept at tossing "I'm just sayin'" into almost any conversation as a touche flourish directed at me. He will absolutely love the latest Marist Poll which states that a percentage of Americans hate the phrase "I'm just sayin'" - although they hate other words and phrases even more.

What's so bad about "Twitterverse"? I sort of like it.
The "Unsure" category cracked me up. I predict that at least 80% of the "Unsure" folks probably use "whatever" or "just sayin'" in their everyday life. Maybe they are just unsure what the fuss is all about or why anyone would waste time polling people on the slang they use? (Just sayin')

For the fourth consecutive year, Americans consider “whatever” to be the most annoying word or phrase in conversation. More than three in ten -- 32% -- have this view while “like” irritates 21% of residents nationally. 17% are most irked by “you know” while 10% would prefer to ban “just sayin’” from today’s lexicon. “Twitterverse” annoys 9% of adults while 5% are ticked off by “gotcha.” Five percent are unsure.

In last year’s survey, 38% thought “whatever” to be the most obnoxious word in casual conversation while 20% said “like” was the most irritating. 19% despised hearing “you know” while “just sayin’” was the most bothersome to 11% of Americans. “Seriously” made last year’s list with 7% reporting it was the most annoying word in conversation. Five percent, at that time, were unsure.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz says the NRA just doesn't get it, and reiterated that Americans aren't thrilled with armed guards in schools. Luntz has done his own Poll of Gun Owners which showed broad support for reasonable gun restrictions, even among members of the NRA.

“The public wants guns out of the schools, not in the schools, and they're not asking for a security official or someone else," Luntz said on CBS’s “This Morning,” responding to a proposal first floated by top NRA lobbyist Wayne LaPierre during a press conference last week."I don’t think the NRA is listening. I don’t think that they understand," Luntz continued. "Most Americans would protect the Second Amendment rights and yet agree with the idea that not every human being should own a gun, not every gun should be available at anytime, anywhere, for anyone. That at gun shows, you should not be able to buy something there and then without any kind of check whatsoever. What they're looking for is a common-sense approach that says that those who are law-abiding should continue to have the right to own a weapon, but that you don’t believe the right should be extended to everyone at every time for every type of weapon.”

On Sunday, NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre was on NBC's Meet the Press, and while he just waffled and insisted that armed guards are the only answer, the interview caused more trouble for show moderator David Gregory, who is now being "investigated" for waving around a clip of live Ammo on the air.

Meet the Police: NBC’s David Gregory Under Investigation For Weapons Violation On Show
. . . This may have been a case where a picture — or consultation with counsel — might have been in order. There is no exception for the media in such possession cases.
On the show with the National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre, Gregory showed him the clip and said “Here’s a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets. Now, isn’t it possible that if we got rid of these . . . if we replaced them and said, ‘Well, you can only have a magazine that carries five bullets, or 10 bullets,’ isn’t it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?”

The predictable response from LaPierre was “I don’t believe that’s going to make one difference.” The less predictable response came from gun owners and gun control advocates who noted that the possession of such a clip is a crime. The D.C. law states “No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device.” This does not require that the clip be attached to a weapon and does not appear to require that it have rounds in the clip.
The reported investigation could also ensnare those NBC employees who obtained and transported the clip.

DAVID GREGORY: This is a matter of logic, Mr. LaPierre, because anybody watching this is going to say ‘hey wait a minute. I just heard Mr. LaPierre say that the standard is we should try anything that might reduce the violence. And you’re telling me that it’s not a matter of common sense that if you don’t have an ability to shoot off 30 rounds without reloading, that just possibly you could reduce the loss of life? Would Adam Lanza have been able to shoot as many kids if he didn’t have as much ammunition?’

“If it’s crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” LaPierre told NBC’s David Gregory. “I think the American people think it’s crazy not to do it. It’s the one thing that would keep people safe and the NRA is going try to do that.”

. . . President Barack Obama has tasked Vice President Joe Biden with the job of consulting with members of the Cabinet and outside organizations to come up with legislative proposals by next month.

When asked about this initiative, LaPierre said, “if it’s a panel that’s just going to be made up of a bunch of people that for the past 20 years has been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I’m not interested in sitting on that panel…. The NRA is not going to let people lose the Second Amendment in this country.”

Following LaPierre on Meet the Press, Sen. Charles Schumer, D- N.Y., said that the NRA leader is “so extreme and so tone deaf that he actually helps the cause of us passing sensible gun legislation in the Congress…. He is so doctrinaire and so adamant that I believe gun owners turn against him as well.”

It helps to say their names, to rescue them from the statistical anonymity that always settles over these awful events. It helps those of us distanced from the loss to imagine, even grieve, the emptiness in the homes and hearts of those who loved them. They will never forget. We mourn, move on, and too soon forget. And then it will happen again one day, and we will scratch our heads and ask ourselves, “Was the last time Newtown? Or Columbine? Was it Aurora? Or that college in Virginia?” And once again we will mourn, move on, and too soon forget.

There is an old Hassidic saying that, “In remembrance is the secret of redemption.” But America forgets quickly, and gives no lasting indication it seeks redemption from its fetish with guns, its romance with the free market of violence. With the sport of it all. The show must go on. It’s our right. At any price. What were their names again? Oh, yes, Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Dylan, Allison, Dawn. Poor things, such a tragedy. Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.

And so we make our peace with violence. And make ourselves over in its image. A state senator in Missouri, a life-time member of the National Rifle Association, is pushing a bill to require that all first graders be enrolled in the NRA’s gun safety course. First-graders. Six and seven years old. Pledge Allegiance to the flag. Lock and Load. Our new Head Start.

A state senator in Tennessee’s Republican legislature says he will introduce a bill that would allow the state to pay for secretly armed teachers in classrooms. Saintly Miss Simpson, packing heat. Hey, Mr. Russell, it’s show and tell, can we see your Glock 9? After the Newtown killings, a sixth-grader at an elementary school near Salt Lake City brought a gun to school, saying he wanted to protect himself and his friends. Instead, allegedly, he used it to threaten some classmates. As The Good Book says, get with it, “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Ready. Aim. Fire.

And for the child who has everything this season, how about body armor? A Utah company named Amendment II offers a new line of it for kids. Mother Jones Magazine reports sales have tripled in one week. A Massachusetts company is promoting The Bullet Blocker, a “rugged computer backpack designed for work or play.” Made of the same materials used in bullet-proof police vests, currently on sale for the holidays for $199.99. And on Facebook, an outfit called Black Dragon Tactical that sells vests and other combat gear sent this message: “Arm the teachers, in the meantime, bulletproof the kids.”

This market never closes. America’s turned violence into a profit center. And if you haven’t finished your Christmas shopping, no need to wait for Santa; his sleigh couldn’t even hold the heavy weapons. Step this way. Black Friday is every day. And we have something for everyone, from cradle to grave. From cradle to grave.

Surely this can’t go on. This spilling of innocent blood, this bleeding of democracy’s soul. We’re losing faith in ourselves, acting as subjects, not citizens, no longer believing that it is in our power to do the right thing. We Americans are not smarter than other people, and certainly no more virtuous. Our exceptionalism is our capacity for self-correction. To reach the bridge of the ship, point to the iceberg dead ahead, and demand of the captain a change of course before it’s too late. “They,” the gun industry, its profiteers, zealots and apologists, its political stooges, fabulists, and constitutional originalists, who would have us think the “well-regulated militia” of a sparsely-populated frontier nation in the 18th century really means tolerating a perpetual wild west here in the 21st century. “They” say, “don’t tread on us, get off our well-armed backs, there’s nothing you can do.”

Of course there is. Register all guns. License all gun owners. Require stringent background checks. Get tough on assault weapons of any kind. Crack down on high-capacity ammunition as the President has now proposed. And then, enforce the laws. Yes, I know, determined killers will always find a way. But we can minimize the opportunities, and scale back the scope of destruction. Why do we accept the need for driver’s licenses? Or submit to the sometimes humiliating body scans at airports? Because it’s the law, and deep down we know we’re safer for the inconvenience of the law.

Good laws are hard to come by. Civilization, just as hard. The rough and tumble of politics makes them so. But democracy aims for a moral order as just as humanly possible, which means laws that protect the weak and not just the strong. Lest we forget.